


Unscrupulous Time

by lirin



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: F/M, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Eileen was too worried to sleep: Polly was never home this late, and the West End had been bombed tonight.





	Unscrupulous Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emiline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emiline/gifts).



> With thanks to my beta drayton.

Polly was never home this late. Eileen hurried Alf and Binnie and Mr. Dunworthy to bed once the all clear had gone, and tried to forget what the warden had said about all the bombs in the West End. Polly had probably just been delayed—

Eileen jumped to her feet and hurried to the phone. There would still be someone at the theater, and they could put Eileen's mind at ease much faster than she could, sitting here spinning impossible stories and jumping at shadows.

The stage manager answered the phone. "No, she isn't here," he said. "She ran out in the middle of the performance, while the raid was going on. That's the last I saw of her. Please let me know if you hear anything from her."

"Thank you," Eileen said. She rang off and stood there, staring blankly at the wall. She realized she was still holding the phone, and put it back on the base with a clatter.

"Eileen?" Binnie stuck her head into the kitchen. "Is Polly all right?"

Eileen didn't even know how to answer that question. She sank into the closest chair.

Binnie went over to the stove and put the kettle on. "Is Polly dead?" she asked. Her face was pale. Eileen wondered if her own face looked like that.

She shook her head slowly. "I don't know. He said she rushed out during the performance, in the middle of the raid, and they haven't seen her since."

"Let's go and look for her!"

Eileen shook her head again. "We'd be no use to Polly rushing around aimlessly in the dark. I'm going to call every hospital in the West End to ask if she's there."

"Can I help?"

"We only have the one phone," Eileen said. "Why don't you finish making that tea for both of us, and then the best thing you can do is go back to bed so that you've had as much sleep as possible if I find out where she is and we have to rush out to go to her."

"You won't leave without us, will you? If you find her?"

"Of course not," Eileen said. "We'll all go together."

 

The phone lines were jammed and it took forever to get each call through; an exchange must have been knocked out in the bombing. It was hours before she heard the answer she was hoping for. "Yes, we have a young woman here who matches that description. She told the ambulance attendant her name was Viola, but her identity card says her name is Polly Churchill."

"Yes, that's her," Eileen said. "I'll be right there." She rushed down the hall and banged on Alf's and Binnie's doors, but let Mr. Dunworthy sleep; she didn't want him to worry about Polly until it was absolutely necessary. Alf and Binnie seemed to sense her hurry, and didn't argue as she rushed them down the hall and out the door, scarcely waiting for them to dress.

 

Lying flat on the hospital bed, Polly looked as white as the sheets surrounding her. It made Eileen feel terribly alone. She'd left so many people behind in her headlong flight to the hospital—first Mr. Dunworthy at the house, then the children in the waiting room—and now she was here with Polly, but Polly could do nothing for her. And she could do nothing for Polly, except wait.

"Do you know where she was found?" she asked the matron.

"In the Phoenix Theatre. They think she wasn't there when it was hit, but she went in after and was caught by the gas leak. There was one other who was brought in at the same time as her, an older man. They were the only victims we had from the Phoenix; we're lucky it didn't hit a theater that was actually open at the time, or we would have been in a lot worse trouble." She made a few notes on Polly's chart and swept out of the room.

"Wait!" Eileen called after her. "Do you know who the other victim was? The older man."

"I think his name was Godfrey," she said.

"Sir Godfrey! Is he all right?"

"Puncture wound and gas inhalation, but I don't think he got as much as your friend here did," she said. "He's already awake and talking, though he has a long recovery ahead. He lost a good deal of blood." She made as if to leave again, but turned back. "Your friend should be waking soon," she said. "She's in good enough health; she'll get through this easily."

Eileen followed her to the door of Polly's room. "Can I see Sir Godfrey?" she asked, quickly. The matron frowned. "He's a friend of Polly's and mine," she explained.

"You can see him, but only for a minute," the matron said. "He's still very weak."

 

The matron was right; Sir Godfrey looked weaker than Eileen had ever seen him. But even in extremity, he still had a strength of presence to him. "Polly?" he asked immediately. "Is she..."

"She's going to be all right," Eileen said. Sir Godfrey sighed in relief, smiling despite the pain he must be in. She knew he was fond of Polly—or was fond the right word? Somehow she doubted that, if she herself had been injured and found to be all right, Sir Godfrey would have had the look on his face he wore now. He and Eileen were acquaintances, perhaps even friends, but the thought of Polly made his eyes light up, even here with so much blood gone from his body.

Perhaps realizing how much his eyes were betraying, he dropped his gaze. "Thank you for telling me," he said. He sank into the pillows, as if he had been waiting to relax until he heard news of Polly.

A nurse bustled in and checked Sir Godfrey's pulse. "No more visitors," she said. "Sir Godfrey needs to rest." She shooed Eileen out of the room.

 

The sun rose, and still Polly did not wake. Eileen stayed with her, and hoped that Alf and Binnie were staying out of trouble, down in the waiting room. She'd rushed them out of the house without even their coats, much less a book or a magazine to give them something to do. She was sure they could find something to do without help, but she doubted it would be something she approved of.

But Polly was more important. Eileen stared at her still form, and finally, when the nurse came in to open the blackout curtains, Polly whispered "Eileen?"

"I'm here," Eileen said. "Are you all right?"

Polly assured her she was, then proceeded to ask a series of rambling questions that made Eileen worry that she wasn't. And then all her thoughts were for Sir Godfrey. She insisted on going to see him immediately. It was urgent, she maintained.

Eileen wished Polly would stay in bed, but the look in her eyes brooked no resistance, so she went downstairs to enlist Alf and Binnie. It was good to let them use their talents for a worthy cause once in a while, she supposed. And hopefully it would help Polly to see Sir Godfrey alive and healing, after whatever had happened last night.

She stayed in the waiting room, hoping it would give her plausible deniability for whatever Alf and Binnie were unleashing upon the unsuspecting nurses. Somewhere above her, Polly was wandering the halls, seeking a man who looked at her as if she hung the stars in the sky. And did she see him as he saw her? Eileen was afraid she did, and felt pity for her. They were all out of time, displaced and uprooted.  If only Polly could have been assigned to 1900 instead of World War II.

But would that be any better? Eileen thought of the last time she'd seen the vicar, and how very difficult it had been to say goodbye. Perhaps it was better this way—or perhaps not. Perhaps Polly's situation was neither easier nor harder, just different. Eileen imagined Polly three floors above, touching Sir Godfrey's brow tenderly. She might do no more, for they were both injured and treasured propriety perhaps too much, but their eyes would speak multitudes. This, then, was the curse of the historian: to travel through unscrupulous time, but to belong to no time at all. To meet people who had loved you before you were ever born, and then—

It did not bear thinking on. If their drops should open some day, as she firmly believed, Polly would lose Sir Godfrey, just as she would lose Mr. Goode. But if she and Polly belonged to no time at all, why choose to dwell in that unhappy future one second sooner than necessary? She and Polly should do what the contemps did, soldiering on one day at a time, with no guarantee of a future, happy or otherwise. “Put aside the future,” Eileen whispered to herself, “and seize the joy of today.”

Very well, then. As soon as Polly was home, they’d begin plotting how best to use their scant rationing coupons to celebrate Sir Godfrey’s release from hospital.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:_  
>  _How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,_  
>  _More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,_  
>  _And make you old, and leave me in my prime?_  
>  _How you and I, who scale together yet_  
>  _A little while the sweet, immortal height_  
>  _No pilgrim may remember or forget,_  
>  _As sure as the world turns, some granite night_  
>  _Shall lie awake and know the gracious flame_  
>  _Gone out forever on the mutual stone;_  
>  _And call to mind that on the day you came_  
>  _I was a child, and you a hero grown?—_  
>  _And the night pass, and the strange morning break_  
>  _Upon our anguish for each other's sake!_  
>  —Edna St. Vincent Millay


End file.
